The Titan’s Curse — Rick Riordan

TITLE: The Titan’s Curse
AUTHOR: Rick Riordan
SERIES: Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #3
RELEASED: May 5th, 2007; Disney-Hyperion
GENRE: Fantasy
AGE RANGE: MG
SYNOPSIS: It’s not everyday you find yourself in combat with a half-lion, half-human.
But when you’re the son of a Greek god, it happens. And now my friend Annabeth is missing, a goddess is in chains and only five half-blood heroes can join the quest to defeat the doomsday monster.
Oh and guess what. The Oracle has predicted that not all of us will survive…

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book 1 . book 2

While I’ve given every book in the series 4 stars each so far, those have been very different 4-star ratings. The Lightning Thief was a solid 4—no more, no less. The Sea of Monsters was really a 4.5, but I couldn’t quite round it up to 5, so here we are. The Titan’s Curse, unfortunately, is a 3.5 rounded up—and I almost didn’t do that, but I have enjoyed the series itself so much overall that I felt like it was worth it. This was the least interesting book in the series so far to me, and had the least enjoyable cast.

In a way, it’s nice to know that there are Greek gods out there, because you have somebody to blame when things go wrong. For instance, when you’re walking away from a bus that’s just been attacked by monster hags and blown up by lightning, and it’s raining on top of everything else, most people might think that’s just really bad luck; when you’re a half-blood, you understand that some divine force is really trying to mess up your day.

Of course, as always, we get to spend time with Percy and Grover, but the opening of the book enters into Annabeth being whisked away, and that set a bit of a bad precedent for the entire installment for me, as I genuinely enjoy Annabeth’s character, as well as the banter she offers. Her presence is more or less replaced by Thalia’s return, as well as the new introduction of Artemis’ righthand Huntress, Zoe—neither of whom quite lived up to the standard that Rick’s books have set for characters so far.

“Love conquers all,” Aphrodite promised. “Look at Helen and Paris. Did they let anything come between them?”
“Didn’t they start the Trojan War and get thousands of people killed?”
“Pfft. That’s not the point. Follow your heart.”

Struggles with the characters aside, enough things remain the same to be enjoyable: Percy is goofy and funny, Grover is terrified and precious, the gods and goddesses are weird and/or hilarious, and the action is suspenseful and easy to follow. Most MG fantasy series have a formula of sorts to them, and Percy is no exception, but the formula in these books is comforting and warm, rather than growing stale.

The cafe windows wrapped all the way around the observation floor, which gave us a beautiful panoramic view of the skeleton army that had come to kill us.

As I expected, it feels as though the narrative is growing with Percy—these books feel like they were created for a fanbase that could age alongside each title’s release, and the plots and dialogue are steadily beginning to feel closer and closer to the YA age range. I love watching this development unfold in the characters and storyline, and genuinely cannot wait to see where it leads to next.

“Stars,” she whispered. “I can see the stars again, my lady.”

The last thing I want to say about The Titan’s Curse is that I was taken aback by how sad some of its scenes are. There’s a surprising amount of death and impending doom in this installment—the heroes even begin their journey with a prophesy looming over them that promises one child’s death—and, without spoiling anything, I’ll just tell you that this was the first installment to make me cry over a loss. The fact that I found myself connecting to the characters that well, despite not loving all of the ones who get a lot of screen time in this installment, felt promising and made me incredibly eager to continue this series.

“Ever had a flying burrito hit you? Well, it’s a deadly projectile, right up there with cannonballs and grenades.”

All in all, this book was my least favorite so far, but that doesn’t change the fact that I cannot recommend this series highly enough if you enjoy fantastical adventures, lovable kids, hilarious (albeit super goofy at times) dialogue, and a really fun plot to suck you in.

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